Roadsternut

May 2025 https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-uk-and-mauritius-agreement-on-chagos-archipelago 20th January 2026 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-slams-uk-deal-to-hand-over-chagos-islands-after-he-previously-supported-it 5th February https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116019287824035088 Flip Flop Taco. Of course, what we should be doing is wooing Mauritius, if that Chagossian rock is so important (and in 20 years, it probably won't be; transitioning to a renewable energy policy essentially renders the Arabs and Iranians as irrelevant). Maybe the Americans should pay for a dam there. Probably a bargain in terms of diplomatic brownie points. A Rand analysis: https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/01/the-devil-will-be-in-the-details-a-formal-uk-mauritius.html Diego Garcia remains a British military base with foreign freeloading guests. I expect Naval Party 1002 to do its duty if there is an unwanted foreign miitary take over, and at least attempt to give a bloody nose, to paraphrase Lieutenant Keith Mills. People more knowledgeable about the region actually say its complete <deleted> that Mauritius will become Pro-Chinese, because basically the population is Indian (3% Chinese). Indians hate the Chinese.

So can Tories like me wait it out.. Wait for the People's Front of Judea to eat the Judean People's Front or vice versa. Meanwhile Death has been stalking. Liz Truss seen meeting the American President.

1980 Labour Day speech from Reagan

And now what's your conclusion? China is doing pretty well in transforming its energy supply I think. Fossil fuels can be used for lots of things besides burning in a power station. Fossil fuel provides for 15% of the world supply. 99% of the feedstocks used in medicine are petrochemical. But now some countries have decided its better to power a TV with it, than to save a dying kid, or to feed a town.

AI. Project Stargate is a US government supported project, where they pointed out one of the grat benefits will be the supercharging of pharmaceutical development, an area of my specialty. AI enhanced mammography has transformed the lives of women. Previously, only 50% of mammograms were correct (what that means was cancers were missed, or cancer was falsely diagnosed leading to unecessary surgery and distress). AI mammography achieves 75% accuracy rates, and is especially beneficial for Western women who often have breasts of high tissue density, one of thr main reasons for misdiagnosis. The drug pipeline for dementia drugs has failed. We need AI for identification of candidate molecules for trials. When you check into hospital, AI is guiding decisions all the way along. What do you think docs are doing with those Ipads? AI is reducing readmission rates. When you become old, you will fall sick. You might end up old and sick in hospital. They discharge you. You get sicker back at home, and end up dying in hospital, in your own filth, unaware of whats going on around you. AI allows community nurses to be able to better predict if you are going to end up back in hospital, and can intervene to stop that happening. The goal of civilisation has always been so we can live a life of leisure, being creative, being human. We have moved away from the days, where we needed 10 kids, because only 2 were going to make it to 5, and we needed the kids because were were spending all day ploughing the fields etc. in order to live to the ripe old age of 35. AI will offer efficiency, in the same way the industrial revolution lead to more efficiency, and more leisure time. Sunday is associated with religion, a day of rest. But the saturday off comes down to a British 19th century industrialist. Having a weekend off is due to industrialisation. The Luddites thought all that tech was wrong. Whatever happened to them?

People throw around these terms. https://cdn.walkfree.org/content/uploads/2023/09/27162417/GSI-Snapshot-China.pdf So 4 per 1000. Oh https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-states/ 3.3 per 1000 https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studies/united-kingdom/ At least the UK is a bit better. Thailand, Land of Smiles, is 5.7 per 1000. And people love going on holiday to the UAE, with 13.4 slaves per 1000 China is not the worst in that respect. The US has twice the rate of slavery as the UK Of course people always point to the plight of the Uyghur people, where the prison system is used for economic production; cheap labour. But the 13th Amendment permits involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. 60% of US convicts work, usualy for no pay. 23% of federal prisoners work in industry, sometimes paid, maybe 10-20 cents an hour, a workforce of about 40,000. About 7% of state prisoners are used as cheap labour for industry, about 80,000 worker convicts. So 120,000 people are basically exploited by government as cheap labour. Maybe they deserve it. Perhaos its about slavery, some slaves are ok. 120,000 government controlled slaves is perfectly acceptable. China's using a few more, so its not really about the principle of slavery, its just objectionable that China is using more than the US. Speaking of "quasi slavery" which is a kind of made up term, denoting "A criminal activity in which people are recruited, harboured, transported, bought, or kidnapped to serve an exploitative purpose, such as sexual slavery, forced labor, or child soldiery", a big fuss right now in the US is whether American billionaires operated a system of quasi-slavery. One of the benefits of the current surge in illegal immigrant detentions, is increased illegal immigrant labour by the federal government. In 1950, two years before the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the comprehensive body of federal law governing immigration. Congress passed what stands today as the legal authority for voluntary paid labor in immigration detention facilities. Previously, the Geneva Convention restricted the use of POW labour. During the McCarthyite era, there was a spike in immigrant detentions. The DOJ was facing challenges, so it claimed, in maintaining order, and suggested the detainees should work, voluntarily of course (in reality people were threatened with solitary confinement if they refused to work). The objective of the1950 law generally was to authorize the DOJ to surpass the appropriations process to incur what was characterized as recurring administrative expenses. Detainees were paid, and since 1950, its been fixed at $1 per day. In 1990 someone went to court over these pay rate, arguing the detainees were effectively federal employees, but the court ruled against that, preserving the $1 a day rate. Currently, this detained immigrant workforce is about 70,000 people. This law might have been behind the thinking to allow undocumented workers to continue to work on farms, but return to a detention centre at night. That surely meets the definiton of "quasi slavery". Those workers cannot change job.

Presumably this is a serious question, and you've forgotten how to Google. A bit above the global average apparently is renewable (at least, as of 2022). @31-35%, depending on the source. The US though is pisspoor, preferring to grow corn for ethanol https://energynow.com/2024/11/mapped-renewable-energy-as-a-percentage-of-power-generation-by-country/ Unlike the West, which seems to flog their coal stations until the end, all those quite new Chinese coal powered stations will be gone by 2040, having served their purpose. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8379489/pdf/main.pdf

Renewables are also the only solution to the insatiable demands of data centers.

Its not Biden's DOJ or Trump's DOJ. Its Deep State, the American Humphreys.

So you think its not due to the Deep State that there is a cover up?

One explanation, and its nothing to do with politics, is the Establishment instinctually protecting itself. Its happened all other the world. The reason why they would is plain to see. The institutional fallout is immense. It rocks our faith in the people who lead us, the people who pay our salaries to, the people we see at the pulpit every Sunday. The Soviet Union didn't survive revelations about the Gulags and the losses in Afghanistan. The House of Windsor might not survive (and boy oh boy, have the Windsors, for 120 years, conducted an effective rear guard action). Untruths were said about the Kennedy assasination, perhaps unecessarily, but it was about protecting the system. When Gary Glitter got caught, it all came out how people knew, kept quiet, didn't wan to rock the boat in the world of Glam Rock. Then Jimmy Saville, covered up to after he died; and not covered up by co-conspirators, but by people afraid, with justification, what such revelations mean to the system. Many cultures have the equivalent to the English mediaeval phrase "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie", an inclination not to discuss issues that aren't causing problems anymore. Saville's crimes died with him. On the other hand, Gary Glitter/Paul Gadd, as soon as he got out of prison, turned out to be far worse that anyone thought, moving from groping groupies and smut on his laptop to full on bed an 11 year old. DJT was a former president, and all previous former presidents usually spent the rest of their lives writing memoirs, getting into new hobbies and interests, building a library. SO I can see why there was a natural inclination by the Establishment, or whatever you call it, to close the book, forget anything ever happened. Its usually a terrible tactic The allegations are not a Left-Right thing but, to paraphrase Talarico, a Top-Down thing. Most of us will happily accept, with question, the allegations concerning Rochdale rape gangs, involving rought and tough, and poor Pakistani men. But we feel its impossible for all these clever billionaire business leaders ever to do such a thing (which ignores why such things happen, its nothing to do with money, except that money seems to provide good insurance at times). There is debate about the teaching of history. On the one hand, some believe teaching history is all about learning about mistakes, never to be repeated. Others believe it should only be about the victories. Others think somewhere in between. Take WW2. One version is a terrific victory by the forces of freedom (we don't talk about the Soviets) over the darkness of fascism. Another version is that WW2 happened because of a shameful deal in Munich, a miscommunication in a Washington office. Another version is that all of that is correct. Generation X is the emerging leadership class. We are of an age where our peers should be and are leading government, after the torch is reluctantly passed from the baby boomers. But we were sold a pup when it comes to the Baby Boomers. We believed it was the Baby Boomers who built postwar prosperity (they did), but we forgot it was on the backs of others. Institutional coverups of abuse, whether its Epstein, Burgess, Saville, Children's Homes, orphans, the mentally ill, babies, women, or reducing housing affordability back to 1890, emptying pension pots to fund a lavish retirement. We're learning that the baby boomers built this rotten system of cover ups, lies, larceny, hypocrisy. The First World War literally destroyed a ruling class; the West was never the same. It was the children (or some of them) of the victors who squandered things. The Establishment/Deep State just want all of this to go away. Most just want it out in the open, damn the consequences.

Back before you were born (probably), Barclaycard carried no logo other than Barclaycard. It wasn't Visa, Mastercard, not even Access. You're being obtuse.

Physcian life expectancy depends on specialty. ER doctors live the shortest, indicating a stressful life, possibly as a result of Australian Anus Enthusiasts keep coming in with stuck hamsters,

People scoffed at the idea of Saville shagging corpses in the hospital mortuary. But it happened. Giuffre raised the allegations of the girls. https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/international/140819/jeffrey-epstein-and-his-french-connection In New Mexico, local officials are now calling for forensic examination of the Zorro ranch

"I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here" US edition, live from Cuba, eating cockroaches. Guest presenters Ant and Dec.

A prosecution might worry some on the other side of the Atlantic. They can't control what might be discovered. Clearly the British police have been working for some time looking at flight records, concerning traffiking of women from Eastern Europe. They are likely working closely with French colleagues who have been looking, for a number of years at the activities and co-conspirators of Jean-Luc Brunel. Brunel ran model agencies, which were used as a cover to traffic East European prostitutes into the United States. Its gets really dark, as there are allegations 12 year olds were sent to the US, presumably to be killed. He ran Karin Models and MC2 Model Management. There are some big names of Eastern bloc "models" possibly involved.

The original Barclaycard was just Barclaycard, though technically it licenced BankAmericard tech.

My flexible friend doesn't need batteries to pay for the groceries. My cards are free, always have been.

Or its a world where government abrogates responsibility. One argument why UK governments so liked the EU was it allowed government to offload responsiblity, and basically blame the EU. Its no coincidence that the UK was a particular stickler for Brussels legislation. Make no mistake though, I am a Remainer. The Middle Powers (a nice new term) need to stick together in a world dominated by two geriatric super powers. The public get upset about what they are told is happening on the internet, because its apparently dominated by child abusers and terrorists, a view perpertrated not even by Digital Experts, but by Analogue Natives. Analogue Natives are those who came of age before the digital age, baby boomers. Most of them adopted digital technology late in life, mostly as a hobby ("Silver Surfers"). Digital Experts came of age at the cusp of the digital age, Gen X, early Millennials. Digital technology is seen mostly as a tool that you have to use, but we have an analogue life as well. We think we can get along fine without wifi. We preferred phone calls and face to face meetings, hated WFH, and would punish anyone doing business in their jim jams.Gen Xers are increasingly like their forefathers, as their careers wind down, responsibilities reduce, and they suddenly realise they have maybe 20 years tops of being compes mentis, so what was the bloody point of planning for 40 years of retirement. So the "internet" a late in life leisure tool, to take to the internet and argue over. Digital natives have only ever known digital, but they are constantly reminded by elders that they need to conform to their standards of behaviour, and so its lip service to going outside to kick a ball around. Now Gen Alpha is waiting in the wings, far removed in their treatment of digital technology from Analogue Natives who are about to croak, but making all the decisions, and doing all the voting. There is likely to be a lot of intergeneration resentment. This is just fuel to the fire. I grew thinking the best of my Grandfather's generation, they fought in a war etc. Do Gen Alphas think the same of their Gen X grandparents? Restricting kids' access to the internet is just a move by Gen X politicans to placate Analogue Natives who are still left alive. What it allows a government to do is check a box. See, we're being tough on social media, because we've stopped kids accessing the internet by passing a law. Does restricting beers sales stop 11 years olds being found legless after necking Special Brew? Did drinking laws stop the alcohol companies from developing products that encouraged a dangerous lifestyle? Nope. The Internet ban will allow these companies to exist in a complete moral vacuum, because the users are all grown adults, and its free speech, innit? It will be a mess, and likely cause the Fall of Civilisation as generation Xers and Y's <deleted> themselves senseless, while ordering spice on next day delivery, while clicking like for the post that suggests we need to revisit the question of maybe Work does set you Free (or rather, you hope its some other bloke who will be set free through work). Nick Clegg joined Meta after leaving politics. Decent enough youthful chap, with kids. Promised he was going to do great things with Meta, really clean it up, to herald a new age of decency and kindness. What did he say about FB before he came on board? Hmm. 10 years on, and whats it like. Not Californian, new-World touchy feely certainly. The government can't regulate the internet. Even China has found this out. Its censorship has merely resulted in a generation of hardcore nationalists, more fans of Bai Qi the Butcher (killed 400,000 in a single battle) than Chairman Mao, who are now largely out of control of the government. Its far easier, cheaper, to say (even self funding perhaps) to pass a law saying kids can't access bits of it, for arbitrary reasons. Government has done its bit, anything that goes tits up, then its obviously the parents/teachers's fault. The government did what the Septogenarian voters wanted in 2026. Check who gets fined for kids getting whacked out on Special Brew and Vodka. Not often the manufacturer. https://adage.com/article/news/marketers-blast-charges-alcohol-suit/96977/ Someone tried to sue the makers. Got absolutely nowhere.

Russia needs to be defeated to save Russia. Russia in WW1 initially experienced disaster. In 1916, they had some success, but morale in the Russian Army was disintegrating. At home, the Russian economy was disintegrating. Government debt went through the roof. Compounding that, trade collapsed because the Ottomans blockaded the Dardenelles. Russia struggled ship out goods via its northern ports, forcing it to buy American icebreakers. The economy transformed to a war footing, but experienced labour shortages, with the result of non-Russians being recruited. There was rampant inflation, and a disintegrating rail network, leading to strikes and widespread protest. This lead to revolution and the subsequent collapse of the Russian empire into independant republics, later Soviets. It's happening again. The war started because of the Russian leadership's paranoia, stoked by the Leader's morbid feat of COVID (leading to relative isolation). But the irony is that the war might be the catalyst for the collapse of the Russian Federation a remment of the Russian empire. Its the last act of the cataclysmic events that started 111 years ago. But its unpredictable what follows, just like October 1917 heralded decades of misery.

Older UK forum members might remember Switch and Solo cards from the late 80s. It merged with Maestro, owned by Mastercard. I suppose the scheme under consideration is the Wero digital wallet, in use in Germany/Netherlands/Belgium and Luxembourg.

Riclag's thread is disrespectful to the deceased in the extreme. He is politicizing a tragedy, presumably to feed a sick sexual fetish about immigrants. The assumed politics of the deceased Brazilian creative director and his spouse are of no relevance to the story.

Gary Glitter's favourite age.

Actually a challenge the Romans encountered 1500 years ago. Their Legions were analogous to Regiments; originally raised based on the place they were from. The Dacians, from the shores of the Black Sea, modern day Romania, built and manned Hadrians Wall. They were in Britain for 200 years. By the end of their deployment, there weren't many Dacians left in their ranks, now full of Romanised Britons, who had adopted Dacian culture. Today's Scottish regiments are full of men from Africa and the Pacific Islands. They wear kilts on parade, march to the pipes, probably eat bridies, but draw a line at the beans. Likely, recruitment would have the same issues today as in the 1890s. In 1890, the Boer War was kicking off, and the High Command saw a European war on the horizon. There was a mobilization to expand the size of the reserves. It was the first time the government was actually interested in the health of the nation. 7 out of 10 volunteers failed the then rudimentary physical, mostly due to Ricketts. It sparked a debate that lead to the creation of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and the recognition, lead by Sir Alfred Keogh (remarkable man, went from Major to General in just a couple of years in South Africa, of the importance of public health in the interests of the nation. He started off the debates that lead to the NHS. Ultimately, the NHS happened because we needed more soldiers. Currently, 30% of the fighting age UK population would fail the Army physical due to obesity. While rejection rates into the army are quite low, at about 3-4%, 60% of those rejected, are rejected on medical grounds. 20% of the current army is medically non-deployable.

Too late for back pedalling. You outed yourself.